If an elite trader tells me a track has been altered but won’t share it; verses a bootlegger, and now, the estate who will provide me with ‘a’ version, I’m going to side with the bootlegger and estate every time.

One side is giving me a rant, the other is giving me Prince music. I’ll side with the music.

2/ The choice of songs/versions. Tinkering aside, I'm down with that, I want everything so in the end whether they release a version or another, as long as it's genuine, I'm happy. I would have done things differently: I would have tried to release the last known Prince version/mix/edit of the track

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4/ Regarding Wally Safford, for those who don't know and IIRC, he's currently accused by the Estate of being behind the tracks that ended-up on the latest Eye Records, and he's facing heavy legal action. Not cool at all and shows that no, it's not yet entirely safe to 'leak' stuff.

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OK, gotta go now. I'll be back later

First of all, it's always safe to release for free, but most elitist traders have the need to not release it no matter what, not trying to attack Neversign, no reason to pick on him, he has been helpful in this debate, right or wrong, I like his input...but most elite traders would rather die than let their stuff leak, it's part of the narcissist nature of many of them. Wally likely just needed the money, but should have known what he was doing. If he is guilty of it, it is his problem, but seriously, is he getting the electric chair? Fines he cannot possibly afford to pay? Wally will probably be ok. He ain't getting his picture on Post Office walls for sure.

And as far as what version to release? It should simply be the best one. If Endorphinmachine was left off Gold, would we want the final version? Not me. And though the first version of songs are not always the best either...Guitar Demo anyone? Yuck! Now if Prince personally tinkered with these songs to get the mixes that are on Originals..great..but I tend to think that they were doctored by the powers that be...I just hope not.

And Duane Tudahl could do another updated edition of his Purple Rain Era Studio Sessions after this release.

Tudahl has already released the same book twice. If he made a 1984-1987 book, and had a section with anything that needed to be in the other book, just add an extra chapter or two, don't make people triple dip for the same book. It's a must read though.

should be very careful about what we are asking for when we complain about the sound quality on tracks like Wouldn’t You Love to Love Me. The Estate is listening and we may only get finished and pristine vault material, which will mean we won’t get gems like that track.[Edited 6/9/19 10:21am][Edited 6/9/19 14:23pm]

I don't know if ANYBODY is actually listening. When everybody involved is bankrupt, little releases like this will not really help. The top 25,000 fans should buy the valut themselves, and vote on all matters. Yeah a pipe dream, but one that would pay off. Of course finding 25,000 fans willing to shell enough money to buy the vault and govern it is far fatched. If I win Powerball, it's mine though lol.

Neversin said:

You lot are just not worth it and deserve the garbage you get and praise....

Neversin said:

Just for you (and maybe other morons): when movies break box office records ...

Neversin said:

Typing the words "Netflix", "Prince" and "Documentary" into, for example, Google is an even too difficult a task for the idiots in here...

Neversin said:

I never heard someone complain about those and if they did they're full of shit...

Neversin said:

Only dumb and full of shit stalkery types, who don't know shit about sound, praise those garbage "bass-heavy because kids like that" headphones...

Neversin said:

You lot are just not worth it and deserve the garbage you get and praise....

Neversin said:

I don't needs more of these fucking insecure smegma munchers coming out the woodwork again to hijack topics and insult me, so stop asking...

The cognative dissonance here is amazing. You obviously know a lot about Prince bootlegs but seriously, give the constant invectives a rest. Why others get flame-snipped at the drop of a hat, but you get a pass for this constant malevolence is beyond me.

This post right here by dustoff is really on point. There's no need for some folks (in this case neversin) to be so vitriolic. We're all fans of Prince's music (or most of us are), and we come to the .org to communicate with others about his music and the various other topics on this website. I appreciate the insights that people bring, but it's hard to enjoy that if somebody's calling people 'morons,' 'idiots,' 'shit stalkery,' and such.

So mant replies since I last came yesterday and many things I'd like to reply to but too little time today. Thanks to everyone who provided insights and debated in a civil manner. Originals is now "out there" on the internet and I gave it my first listen. Of course it was an interesting listening experience but for now I'll just stick to a few general comments.

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1/ The Frankenstein situation: I will do my best to investigate, check available info about recording logs and ask a few people I know, and also read the Jill/Susannah interview above in details. I will try to come-up with a detailed report of everything I've found about each track. However Neversin already revealed enough and despite some people's defiance, I will say this: there are some people here who, though being only human and (like myself, of course) not free from making a mistake every once in a while, have provided usueful information to the community without failing year after year. I share with those people a taste for accurate and objective information and research, and I trust their judgement, not blindly, not foolishly, but because so far and as far as I know, they have never been caught making up shit or talking nonsense. Neversin is one of those people, I appreciate his insights and I trust his judgement. I will, nevertheless, try to cross sources and informations to try and come-up with the most accurate results, and explain my reasoning when I do so, as I have with NC2U, so everyone can judge for themselves. Please people before asking again "how can you possibly know...", go back and read the detailed explaination I already posted twice in this thread, and see for yourself.

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2/ The choice of songs/versions. Tinkering aside, I'm down with that, I want everything so in the end whether they release a version or another, as long as it's genuine, I'm happy. I would have done things differently: I would have tried to release the last known Prince version/mix/edit of the track before it was overdubbed by the vocal artist or sent to an artist outside the camp. But that's OK, I'm always happy to have anything. The sequencing certainly doesn't sound anything like a "real" Prince album but if you accept it's just a compilation and not intended as an album, it's OK too, you can always make your own playlist of posthumous songs. I think I'll still prefer the final released versions, in many case I find those "works in progress" versions less dynamic than what Prince finally put out and I think his choices were wise when he finished the tracks, but it's always great to have earlier cuts.

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3/ The sound. Again, putting aside the tinkering and with M. Howe acknowledging, at least, that they had to remix the multitracks based on the cassette mixdowns, I have a few things in mind that bother me a little but there I'd really like to hear what Kares and other people with engineering experience have to say. I think maybe this is more a matter of mastering than mixing, but I find many tracks to sound different from the released versions. I find the overall sound to have more bass and depth, in lack of better words, than the old Prince releases. Those sounded a little flatter and more high pitched, which IMHO made the songs sound more dynamic and agressive (Sex Shooter would be a perfect example: the Originals version sounds much less agressive to me despite being the same). It's particularly obvious to me with Baby, You're A Trip, and even more when it comes to the drums: compare it to the JJ version and it sounds totally different. But it could also be the fact that I have all those songs from the CDs, which are said too have been poorly transfered and sound bad by comparison to the original LP's. So I wouldn't go as far as to say this is all wrong, + I don't have the best stereo, and I'm no audiophile, so feel free to dismiss this whole paragraph, but my impression is that those new mixes/masters do not attempt much to respect Prince's original, sometimes a bit lo-fi, vision. This is not so much a surprise considering how the vocals and strings are mixed differently on NC2U by comparison to the original, unreleased Family version.

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You're right in saying that many of the new mixes sound quite different to the previously released versions. But it's mainly the result of mixing, not mastering. I'm not sure what work-in-progress or raw mixdown tapes they used as references, but the results are surely different and in some cases (especially Manic Monday) sound even a bit disrespectful of the original. (I love MM on the new release, I just don't think it is ethical to change the sound that much.). The main issue with the new mixes is that the effects used during the mixing process back when they were mixing the Vanity 6, Sheila E, Apollonia 6 etc tracks are missing and/or are different on these new versions. Some engineers/artists prefer "printing" the effects to tape, in those cases the multitracks end up already having most of the effects so they are very easy to mix – others, like Prince, liked to retain the flexibility for future mixes by only recording dry signals and adding effects only during the mixing process. Both approaches have pros and cons of course. But on some songs of 'Originals' it seems like we ended up with mostly just the dry signal that was found on the multitrack, hence the different sound when compared with the previous releases.

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Another issue is (again...) the tape speeds. 'Sex Shooter' is slightly below, 'Wouldn't You Love To Love Me' is slightly above normal pitch, but some others aren't 100% spot on either.

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[Edited 6/9/19 3:19am]

This civil tone and sincerity is muc appreciated, at least by me.

Btw, my g, next letter in te alpabet, and quotation mark keys are failin badly, so please excuse tose letters not appearin in some words.

Yep. I have to hand it to whomever mixed this all out. Who knows what the state of the recordings were when they got their hands on them, but the mix is so fucking tasteful. So good. The voices, the music, all the little flourishes are at the perfect level. I sincerely hope the people behind this compilation get props during awards season.

Wouldn't You Love to Love Me is my jam! It's funny how the song that I enjoy the most is the one with the worst sound quality. It's got this driving groove to it that just makes my head bob. This could be a single release, but that sounds quality means that it probably won't ... that plus the crazy late 70s / early 80s disco key change that occurs in the extended part of the chorus. This version is so much better than the bootleg that I have and better than the Taja Sevelle version. Something about the energy reminds me of the early 80s version of Extraloveable.

Other songs that I really enjoy are Manic Monday, Jungle Love, and You're My Love. MM because I like the melancholy (possiby just laid back) voice. JL cause it's fun. You're My Love because of the very different from typical Prince vocals, although the song itself is very cheesy.

I'd be really happy if a single emerges from this that does well on the radio, but I can't really see it. The most radio friendly songs already had their run back in the 80s. What's cool about a popular single, to me, is that you can experience enjoying the song with random groups of people, in conversations, and at unexpected places. It becomes part of a collective experience, which is just a cool thing. Instead, this is like a great single disc bootleg of random songs--a disc that I can enjoy at home, in the car, or with a couple of friends but probably won't be a larger, collective experience.

Could the speed/pitch problem just be down to the tape player which this session was recorded to?

.It is due to that indeed. He taped it on a machine (probably some cheap, consumer tape recorder) that wasn't properly calibrated. Now as long as you play back the tape on the same machine, the recording is fine of course. The problem starts when you put it into a different machine, which is what happened here, obviously. Mr Howe & Co. obviously transferred this tape to computer using a properly calibrated professional cassette recorder. Which resulted in playing it back slightly faster (and higher in pitch) than Prince's old recorder would've played it. It is something they should've noticed and corrected, as this would NOT have been manipulation, it would've been a simple case of eliminating a technical glitch..

Is this why so many of the outtakes that circulate have pitch issues (at least from what I see other people say--I can't usually tell)? I know there are a few that circulate in very different speeds, but far more often I see people say something's slightly fast or slightly slow, but I wondered how they could tell. Your explanation has cleared that up quite a bit (my ear isn't going to tell me exactly what the A is tuned to, but I understand that some people can in fact hear it).

Also, thanks to Neversin for more information on what's he sees as happening with these released versions--and for giving some clues as to what's in collectors' hands. For me, the main thing that needs to happen in these general releases is clear and honest descriptions of what they used and what they did--I'd like to have any and every thing that can be considered a stop on the way in every track's development, but that sort of archive dump (looking at Bob's ongoing Bootleg Series and Copyright extension inspired releases) is only going to happen a ways down the road, if ever. I doubt they're even close to knowing what they've got at this point. But for now, I'd really like more clear explanations with tracks then we've received so far.

Wish we got the full version of that and Sex Shooter. Outside of those two, I'm really enjoying Originals. It should be a good gateway for people that only know Prince in passing.

This one was even a little different than the leaked version but honestly there wasnt too much to go on after the vocals stopped honestly unlike the Sheila E version with her glorious percussion

Download all the shit hop that you can for your kids, neices, nephews, and their friends also. That will prevent them from going out and buying it and will prevent some shit hop sales. Every little bit helps - Andy
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemus

.It is due to that indeed. He taped it on a machine (probably some cheap, consumer tape recorder) that wasn't properly calibrated. Now as long as you play back the tape on the same machine, the recording is fine of course. The problem starts when you put it into a different machine, which is what happened here, obviously. Mr Howe & Co. obviously transferred this tape to computer using a properly calibrated professional cassette recorder. Which resulted in playing it back slightly faster (and higher in pitch) than Prince's old recorder would've played it. It is something they should've noticed and corrected, as this would NOT have been manipulation, it would've been a simple case of eliminating a technical glitch..

Is this why so many of the outtakes that circulate have pitch issues (at least from what I see other people say--I can't usually tell)? I know there are a few that circulate in very different speeds, but far more often I see people say something's slightly fast or slightly slow, but I wondered how they could tell. Your explanation has cleared that up quite a bit (my ear isn't going to tell me exactly what the A is tuned to, but I understand that some people can in fact hear it).

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Yes, more often than not, a cassette played back on a different machine than it was recorded on will play slightly slower or faster, as most cassette recorders weren't accurately calibrated (I'm talking about the consumer ones, of course, not the professional ones.) It's a very simple fix though, once the tape is transferred to computer – you just need good ears to readjust the playback speed so the music will match the standard-tuned musical notes. Another common anomaly of the cheap cassette recorders, wow&flutter (an irregularly changing speed back and forth), is a far more serious issue though and it's next-to-impossible to correct, although there are 1 or 2 promising plugins now in development..

BTW, there's another type of tape-speed issue that's very often noticable even on big selling albums made typically in the '60s and '70s: when some songs on the album are playing slightly off-key. That is the result of using incorrectly calibrated tape-recorders in the studio. Typically, when the band ran out of tracks to record to (on the 4-, 8- or 16-track machine), they mixed ("dumped") the already recorded tracks onto 2 tracks of another multitrack machine, so they could gain additional tracks to record to. But often this new multitrack tape was put back on the previous machine and if there was a speed-difference between the two machines, it played back slightly slower or faster (therefore higher or lower in pitch too). Often these differences were tiny so it didn't even bother the musicians, but sometimes could be very noticable, especially when it happened during mastering (playing back the mixdown tape on a machine with slightly different speed than the one it was recorded on). And it can be very annoying on an album, especially when two songs or pieces are in the same key and are next to each other, but one of them plays half of a semitone higher or lower. .

And then there are tempo issues on some recordings that have nothing to do with tape or any technical problems, only with sloppy musicianship: such as the 12" version of Let's Work or Billy Cobham's 'Stratus'. I love these tracks but it really annoys me how both of them slow down gradually, especially 'Stratus'. And we're not talking about amateur musicians here... .

The cognative dissonance here is amazing. You obviously know a lot about Prince bootlegs but seriously, give the constant invectives a rest. Why others get flame-snipped at the drop of a hat, but you get a pass for this constant malevolence is beyond me.

This post right here by dustoff is really on point. There's no need for some folks (in this case neversin) to be so vitriolic. We're all fans of Prince's music (or most of us are), and we come to the .org to communicate with others about his music and the various other topics on this website. I appreciate the insights that people bring, but it's hard to enjoy that if somebody's calling people 'morons,' 'idiots,' 'shit stalkery,' and such.

This post right here by dustoff is really on point. There's no need for some folks (in this case neversin) to be so vitriolic. We're all fans of Prince's music (or most of us are), and we come to the .org to communicate with others about his music and the various other topics on this website. I appreciate the insights that people bring, but it's hard to enjoy that if somebody's calling people 'morons,' 'idiots,' 'shit stalkery,' and such.

Some people just deserve it.

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Maybe. Yet we can still choose to act in a civil manner and stay respectful of each other.

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I'd go as far as humbly noting that perhaps we could even show mutual respect for each other as well as to the man who brought us together by entirely ditching swearing too, for example. I have a feeling it won't happen, but just think about it for a minute: what if this group of people that claims to admire Prince's legacy could actually change and move forward along some of the universal values he happened to appreciate in his latter years. I'm not talking about following him to Jehova's Witnesses or believing in "chemtrails", no. I'm only talking about swearing which is something that honestly hurts my ear, and I'm not the only one. How much more civil it would be if we could just all respect each other at least on the basic level of not offending...

The closed thread leadline made on the "cathedral"-like echo present on the tracks has me going back and hearing it everywhere. https://prince.org/msg/7/459780

Like listen to the parts on "Jungle Love" when it's just Prince talking over just the guitar lick (1:27 "You wanna make love or what?" line, full echo chamber) Or that mass of echo washing into the tape degradation of "Wouldn't You Love to Love Me?" I kind of don't remember a similar sound on other Prince recordings from the same time either.

leadline said:

Almost all these tracks seem to have a chorus and reverb effect added to the main vocal track, there is no way Prince had this much echo, or any at all, on his voice for these demos when he recorded them, yet this ehco/reverb/chorus is consistent across 10 years of demos on a singular album of demos. No other unlreleased demos that we have have shared this similiarity.

The closed thread leadline made on the "cathedral"-like echo present on the tracks has me going back and hearing it everywhere. https://prince.org/msg/7/459780

Like listen to the parts on "Jungle Love" when it's just Prince talking over just the guitar lick (1:27 "You wanna make love or what?" line, full echo chamber) Or that mass of echo washing into the tape degradation of "Wouldn't You Love to Love Me?" I kind of don't remember a similar sound on other Prince recordings from the same time either.

leadline said:

Almost all these tracks seem to have a chorus and reverb effect added to the main vocal track, there is no way Prince had this much echo, or any at all, on his voice for these demos when he recorded them, yet this ehco/reverb/chorus is consistent across 10 years of demos on a singular album of demos. No other unlreleased demos that we have have shared this similiarity.

Kinda ticks me off they took the liberty to do this.

[Edited 6/11/19 0:08am]

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It's reverb, not echo, but you're right in saying that it's too wet and also got a chorusy type of effect on Prince's vocals and these are all very different to the sound on the Time version. Morris's vocals are constantly being panned left and right but it hasn't got that much effect on it, while Prince's vocal track is not moving left-right, but it's got that weird chorus effect and too much reverb.

.WYLTLM is not from cassette, btw, as someone here claimed, but it's drowning in reverb too – sounds like the drums have a ton of spring reverb on them. .Sonically the mixes on this album are a right mess. Some too dry, some drowning in reverb. And I've just read another interview with M. Howe that made me even more uncomfortable than I already was regarding the future of the vault...

I mean how many decades and how many dozen rereleases it took Columbia to correct the speed of Kind of Blue?...

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Yes, I almost forgot: the tape speed issue with KoB, finally fixed for a remaster in 1992 (so 34 years to fix that mistake, using the backup tapes). That's the kind of mistakes I don't notice, though, as I'm not a musician. The different versions of "Agharta", mixed completely differently (effects vs no effects) and with completely different durations, are the things that bother me.

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Kares said:

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I just want to say, before the org police comes and clears all my offtopic ramblings that I appreciate your avatar - Aura is such an amazing and underrated album!

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Yes, amazing album. I realized yesterday that I hadn't listened to it in many years, so listened to it again. Speaking of technical mistakes and to be slightly more on-topic: the 2000 remaster of "Aura" has at least 3 obvious differences compared to the original release, and those differences are IIRC not documented in the liner notes (at least 2 of them are not). We're talking about parts of the recordings that were not included on the original releases, here, not stuff that was removed or modified, but those things should be documented. Always. In the case of "Originals", it would be even more important to have all the technical details.

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Kares said:

And I've just read another interview with M. Howe that made me even more uncomfortable than I already was regarding the future of the vault...

1.: An absolute, total lack of concept and long-term release plan, instead he's improvising based on feedback..

2.: No thoroughly researched, systematic cataloguing of every single recording (if there would be one, he'd immediately see how outrageously he's underestimating the amount of treasures they're sitting on by saying "we have enough material to make another volume". They have enough material to make 9 more volumes of 'Originals' – with deluxe versions of each, containing every version of every track, instead of the edits and ignorant mixes they made.).3.: Apparent lack of a deep technical understanding of studio engineering..4.: Serious lack of knowledge regarding Prince's circulating outtakes and of how the collectors' community operates and how the huge Prince-bootleg market works. ("I was surprised to see things circulating in very good quality. I do not know how it is done.").....and I could go on... And this is only regarding the future releases. Prince's legacy, however, is far more than the music, and we haven't even started talking about preserving that. .

1.: An absolute, total lack of concept and long-term release plan, instead he's improvising based on feedback..

2.: No thoroughly researched, systematic cataloguing of every single recording (if there would be one, he'd immediately see how outrageously he's underestimating the amount of treasures they're sitting on by saying "we have enough material to make another volume". They have enough material to make 9 more volumes of 'Originals' – with deluxe versions of each, containing every version of every track, instead of the edits and ignorant mixes they made.).3.: Apparent lack of a deep technical understanding of studio engineering..4.: Serious lack of knowledge regarding Prince's circulating outtakes and of how the collectors' community operates and how the huge Prince-bootleg market works. ("I was surprised to see things circulating in very good quality. I do not know how it is done.").....and I could go on... And this is only regarding the future releases. Prince's legacy, however, is far more than the music, and we haven't even started talking about preserving that. .

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Don't you think we should write him a letter or something? What's the most constructive thing we could/should do?

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I don't know if unsolicited help/advice would be appreciated, but if we do something, it should probably be done as a concerted effort.